Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers, and Victims of the Twentieth Century

By R. Barri Flowers

From R. Barri Flowers, award-winning criminologist and bestselling author, comes the newly updated compelling narrative nonfiction and historical true crime book, Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers, and Victims of the Twentieth Century.

From the assassination of President William McKinley on September 6, 1901, to the mass killing at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, the 20th century saw many notable, less known, and rare murderous events that have become a part of our national history. This history, homicide, and reference book is divided into three parts.

Part I: A Century of Unforgettable Murders is arranged chronologically and details some of the most recognized murder cases of the 20th century in the United States, such as the assassinations of President John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the deadly saga of Bonnie and Clyde, the St. Valentine’s Day massacre, and the kidnap and murder of Bobby Franks.

Part II: A Century of Murderers has over 300 entries (alphabetically arranged by criminal), provides descriptions of crimes, and is subdivided into male, female, and juvenile murderers; pair and group murderers; hate crime murderers; serial and mass killers, school killings, and killers of celebrities.

Part III: A Century of Victims features crime events related to over 40 selected adult and child victims. Cross references guide the reader to additional or related information.

Part IV: A Century of Murderers and Murders Outside of the U.S. highlights various lethal crimes in other countries including black widows, mass murderers, serial killers, and terrorist attacks.

Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers, and Victims of the Twentieth Century is a must-read for anyone with an interest in history, criminal behavior, and a wide range of homicide offenses that occurred over time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: R. Barri Flowers
• Release date: Jul 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463813515

R. Barri Flowers

R. Barri Flowers is the award winning author of romantic suspense, mystery, thriller and crime fiction with thirteen Harlequin titles published to date. Chemistry and conflict between the hero and heroine, attention to detail, and incorporating the very latest advances in criminal investigations, are the cornerstones of his crime and thriller fiction. He enjoys travelling around the country and abroad to scope out intriguing settings for future storylines, books, and miniseries.

Book preview

PREFACE

According to recent FBI figures, the number of murders being committed in the United States is on the decline. This is good news in the early part of the 21st century. Indeed, with recent crime legislation, stiffer penalties for offenders, and more law enforcement personnel on the streets, most forms of violence appear to be lessening in their incidence and impact on society. However, there are still tens of thousands of people murdered each year in this country, with such horrific examples as the September 11, 2011, terrorist attack and recent cases of mass murder at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut; a nightclub in Orlando, Florida; and a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. Killers and homicide victims range from spouses or lovers, to children and young adults, to serial killers and mass murderers or organized crime killers, to hate crime killers and sex-related or politically motivated murderers, to gangland killers, to insane and random murderers. What this tells us is that society is heterogeneous when it comes to murder and those involved. It also tells us that history is our best teacher in recording and understanding the when’s, why’s, motives, methods, and madness in this decisive type of violence and how we might reduce it further, if not prevent it altogether for future generations.

Murders in the United States: Crimes, Killers, and Victims of the Twentieth Century takes a unique look at the crime of murder from 1900 to 1999 in America, providing a summary of events, killers, and victims. It will include homicides that were headliners, heinous, shocking, familial, serial, sexual, singular, mass, unbelievable, or otherwise unforgettable or of historical significance or interest as part of our country’s shameful past century. Among the murders profiled are those driven by greed, jealousy, sex, love triangles, hatred, politics, profit, racism, vendettas, perversions, insanity, and other causes or motivations.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I recounts many of the more unforgettable and significant murder cases of the 20th century. Part II focuses on murderers in the 1900s, subdivided into men, women, and juvenile killers; pair and group killers; hate crime killers; and school killings.

Part III looks at notable victims of murder in 20th century America. Part IV contains noteworthy murderers and murders in other countries in the last century. A glossary is provided for understanding terms. Finally, a comprehensive reference section can be found at the end of the book for more detailed study of specific murder crimes, killers, and victims in the 1900s.

The book is an excellent reference tool for historians, true crime buffs, researchers, writers, scholars, students, criminal justice professionals, laypersons, and others with an interest in the crime of murder and its varied participants in the 20th century.

INTRODUCTION

The specter of murder at the dawn of the 1900s may be most memorable for some shocking murders and murderers near the turn of the century. These would, in many respects, set the tone for homicides that would occur throughout the 20th century. Perhaps the most unsettling crime of murder in the late 19th century occurred in Massachusetts on August 4, 1892, when banker Andrew Borden, sixty-nine, and his second wife, Abby, sixty-four, were bludgeoned to death with an axe in their home. Suspected of the brutal slayings was Andrew’s youngest daughter, thirty-two-year-old Lizzie Borden. She was put on trial and acquitted of the heinous crime of parricide, but suspicions of guilt and insanity dogged Borden until her death in 1927.

Another vicious axe and gun crime of murder occurred on May 26, 1896, in the Santa Clara Valley of California, when James C. Durham went berserk and killed four members of his family and two employees. The mass murderer used an axe, a .45-caliber pistol, and a .38-caliber revolver to kill his twenty-five-year-old wife, Hattie, her mother and stepfather, brother, and the two hired helpers for the family. The only one spared was Durham’s infant son. Speculation was that the murders were caused by parental interference in their lives and the resultant family friction. Durham escaped on his brother-in-law’s horse. In spite of being hunted by a posse and reportedly spotted in various places over the years, he was never apprehended.

Other turn of the century murders in America that gained attention for their brutality, familial, or intimate nature included one in Chicago in 1897 when Adolph Luetgert murdered his wife. The sausage maker dissolved her body with potash found at his factory. Teeth and bone fragments of the victim were discovered some weeks later. Luetgert was convicted of killing his wife and sentenced to life imprisonment.

One year later in 1898, San Franciscan Cordelia Botkin—who had been having an affair with a married man, John Dunning—became jealous. She poisoned to death his wife and his sister-in-law by lacing chocolate bonbons with the poison, which the victims ate. Botkin was convicted of first-degree murder and given a life sentence in prison. Though insisting on her innocence, she spent the rest of her life behind bars.

In spite of the heinous nature of these killings, the latter part of the 19th century also produced one of America’s worst mass and serial murderers. Herman Webster Mudgett, also known as Harry Howard Holmes, was born in 1860 in New Hampshire. By the early 1890s, Mudgett had honed his skills as a swindler, cheating husband, and sexual murderer, and moved to Chicago where he managed a boarding house referred to as Holmes Castle, Murder Castle, and Nightmare House. The names were apt in describing a death house where it is believed that Mudgett drugged, tortured, and murdered at least twenty-seven guests, including an untold number who disappeared during the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. He was finally apprehended after a vengeful-minded insurance accomplice reported a murder plot. He was sentenced to death in November 1895 and executed on May 27, 1896.

It is worth noting that murder was also making news and terrorizing citizens on the other side of the Atlantic in the 19th century. For example, in 1811, John Williams, a sailor, was convicted of the Ratcliffe Highway murders in which two families in London, England’s East End were stabbed and bludgeoned to death. Robbery was thought to be the motive. The violent nature of the murders was a prelude of murders to come.

Perhaps the most infamous murderer of all time was Jack the Ripper. The mutilating sexual serial killer hunted down prostitutes in London in the fall of 1888, stabbing and disemboweling five streetwalkers, before vanishing without a trace. A bit earlier, in 1867, Frederick Baker, a Hampshire clerk, kidnapped and murdered seven-year-old Fanny Adams and then dismembered her body. He was convicted and executed that year. In Paris, France, in 1880, twenty-year-old Louis Menesclou abducted, strangled, and dismembered a four-year-old girl. The literature is replete with other examples of various types of homicides in other countries near the turn of the century.

Murder in the 20th century proved to be equally horrific—both in America and abroad—producing sexual killers, serial killers, mass murderers, black widows, intimate killers, juvenile killers, and other combinations of murderers and victims.

PART I

A CENTURY OF UNFORGETTABLE MURDERS

The 1900s: The First Decade

The first decade of the 20th century was marked, most notably, by the assassination of President William McKinley, the shocking kidnap and murder of seven-year-old Walter Lamana, the murder of famed architect Stanford White, and the murder-for-profit killings of serial murderers Johann Hoch and Belle Gunness.

The Assassination of President William McKinley

On the afternoon of September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, New York, in what many called the Queen City’s Darkest Moment in History. McKinley, the 25th President of the United States, was attending a reception just after four p.m. in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition. While extending his hand to shake that of his would-be assassin, he was shot twice. The first bullet struck the President’s breast, the second entered his abdomen, tearing into his stomach. He died eight days later.

The shooter was quickly apprehended by secret service agents and taken into custody. The killer was identified as Leon Czolgosz, a twenty-eight-year-old blacksmith from Cleveland, Ohio. Czolgosz described himself as a disciple of anarchist Emma Goldberg, whose doctrines rejected this type of government. He had come to Buffalo three days earlier for the express purpose of killing the President. He succeeded in his objective when he pulled the gun from under a handkerchief and fatally wounded McKinley as he greeted him.

Czolgosz was beaten severely by an angry mob en route to Buffalo Police Headquarters but survived to stand trial on September 23, 1901, for the assassination of President William McKinley. A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death. On October 29, 1901, Leon Czolgosz was strapped into the electric chair at Auburn Prison where his sentence was carried out. See also Adult Victims, McKinley, William; Politically Motivated Killers – Men, Czolgosz, Leon.

The Death of Marie Walcker

On January 12, 1905, Marie Walcker, a Chicago sweet shop owner, became one of six wives who would be poisoned by serial murderer Johann Hoch in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Hoch was born as Johann Schmidt in Germany in 1860. He abandoned his wife and children and made his way by boat to the United States in 1887. By 1905, Hoch had married at least a dozen women—murdering half of them, usually for their money or other assets. Shortly after the mysterious death of Marie Walcker, Hoch married her sister, Julia. She too might have become another victim or an abandoned and swindled wife had her suspicions about Johann Hoch not frightened him off while she alerted authorities.

Marie Walcker’s body was exhumed—her cause of death had been misdiagnosed as due to nephritis—and a post-mortem detected an unusual amount of arsenic in her stomach and liver. The case drew national attention. Hoch, who had fled to New York under another assumed name, was identified by his photograph, arrested, and returned to Chicago to stand trial for the murder of Marie Walcker. He was convicted and sentenced to death. After an appeal was rejected, Johann Hoch was put to death by hanging on February 23, 1906.

Some speculate that murder-for-profit killer Hoch may have murdered more wives than believed during his time in America, as his first known victim came after he had already been in the country for nearly a decade.

The Murder Case of Harry Thaw

On June 25, 1906, celebrated architect Stanford White was watching a rooftop musical performance at the first Madison Square Garden in New York City when millionaire Harry K. Thaw shot him to death. The thirty-five-year-old Thaw had stormed over to the table and accused White of ruining his wife, ex-showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, before shooting the fifty-two-year-old twice in the head, killing him instantly. Thaw was quickly apprehended and charged with murder.

During two highly publicized trials, it was revealed that both men had an unnatural sexual attraction to young females. Evelyn Nesbit was sixteen when she became White’s mistress in the early 1900s, seen as a step toward achieving stardom in the theater. Thaw, who inherited his wealth, was taken with the seventeen-year-old Nesbit in 1901, pressuring her to dump White in favor of him. She succumbed to his advances and married Thaw in 1905. Only then did she learn how insecure, jealous, and violent he was, frequently being battered by her husband at his irrational whim.

Thaw’s first trial ended in a hung jury, and he was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity in the second trial. He was committed to the New York Asylum for the Criminally Insane. After fleeing to Canada in 1913, Thaw divorced Nesbit and was eventually re-institutionalized for other violent behavior and released once more in 1922. Harry Thaw continued his life as a playboy and litigant in lawsuits involving other showgirls and actresses until his death in 1947.

The Kidnapping and Murder of Walter Lamana

In June 1907, seven-year-old Walter Lamana became a murder victim of the Mafia or Black Hand, when he was kidnapped in New Orleans’ Italian district. Shortly thereafter, a ransom demand of $6,000 was made to his father. The abduction was apparently meant to further secure the Mafia’s grip on power in that section of New Orleans, where many Italians had been forced for years to pay protection money to the Black Hand.

An investigation led to the capture of Black Hand members Frank Gendusa and Ignazio Campisciano, the latter by a posse. Campisciano led authorities to a swamp where the corpse of Walter Lamana was discovered in a blanket. He had been bludgeoned to death with a hatchet.

Four of Lamana’s kidnappers were tried, including the man who had abducted the boy, Tony Costa. All were found guilty but avoided the death penalty. Two other participants in the crime—siblings Leonardo Gebbia and Nicolina Gebbia—went to trial several months later because of public outrage. Both were convicted. Leonardo was hanged and Nicolina received a sentence of life in prison. The actual killer of Walter Lamana was never brought to justice. However, the Black Hand’s grip on power in New Orleans was destroyed.

The Gunness Farmhouse Fire

On April 27, 1908, a roaring fire destroyed a farmhouse in a rural area in Indiana near the town of La Porte. The farm belonged to Belle Gunness, one of America’s most infamous female serial murderers and Black Widows. Nicknamed Lady Bluebeard due to her penchant for murdering for profit, Gunness was born in 1859 as Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth. She is estimated to have taken as many as forty-nine lives between 1896 and 1908. Victims died most often by poisoning and included two husbands and a number of her children.

Belle Gunness herself may have become a victim of murder on that night in April. The charred bodies of three young children and a headless woman were uncovered beneath the rubble. Though the head was never found, it was assumed that the woman was Gunness when her dental bridge was uncovered amongst the debris. Arrested and charged with multiple murders and arson was Ray Lamphere, ex-handyman and lover of Gunness. That very day, Belle Gunness had reportedly accused a vengeful Lamphere of intending to burn her farmhouse down.

However, suspicions abound about Gunness when authorities discovered that her property was littered with the skeletal remains of various suitors and hired hands. Many had been dismembered or found in the hog pen. It turned out that Belle Gunness had been the beneficiary of life insurance or otherwise robbed many of the victims of their assets.

In spite of these revelations, Ray Lamphere went to trial for four murders and arson. A doctor testified that poison was found in the bodies of all four victims, suggesting murder and possibly suicide before the fire. On November 26, 1908, Lamphere was found guilty of arson and not guilty on four counts of murder. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison, where he died shortly thereafter of consumption.

Many believe that Belle Gunness actually faked her own death and lived to a ripe old age, continuing as Lady Bluebeard well after the farmhouse fire. See also Black Widow Killers – Women, Gunness, Belle.

The 1910s

The 1910s were characterized by the murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan and the subsequent hanging of her alleged killer, Leo Frank; a serial killer in New Orleans dubbed the Mad Axeman; and a poisonous black widow killer named Lydia Trueblood.

The Murder of Mary Phagan

On the Saturday morning of April 26, 1913, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan went to pick up her paycheck at the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta, Georgia, where she worked putting erasers into the metal casing atop pencils. It was the last time she was seen alive. The following morning, a night watchman found her body in the basement of the pencil factory, beaten and strangled to death. There were indications that she may also have been sexually assaulted.

A number of suspects surfaced. Given the racial climate of the day—fresh off the Jim Crow era of discrimination and segregation in the South—not too surprisingly the perpetrator was suspected of being black. This belief was, no doubt, aided by the discovery of two scrambled notes near Phagan’s body that suggested her killer was a black man. Among the chief suspects were the night watchman who discovered the body, Newt Lee, and James Conley, a factory sweeper and career criminal. Under interrogation, Conley confessed to writing the two notes but claimed someone else had ordered him to.

Leo Frank, the plant superintendent and part owner, emerged as a suspect. The twenty-nine-year-old Frank was born in Brooklyn, New York, and Jewish. He had seen Mary Phagan the day the murder occurred to give her her paycheck. Some other female employees had told police of Frank’s offensive attempts at romancing them. The frail, thin Frank was arrested and charged with Phagan’s murder.

With Conley as the prosecution’s chief witness, Leo Frank was found guilty of murder on August 25, 1913, and sentenced to death by hanging. However, Frank’s supporters believed he had been unjustly convicted and questioned the verdict enough to cause the governor to commute his sentence to life imprisonment on June 21, 1915.

There was equally strong support for Frank’s guilt and death sentence, with anti-Semitism running high in the South. On August 17, 1915, a lynch mob of some twenty-five men calling themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan overpowered guards at the Milledgeville state prison where Frank was being held. They abducted Frank and drove him to Mary Phagan’s hometown of Marietta, Georgia, where he was blindfolded and hung from an oak tree. Leo Frank’s killers were never apprehended, but his death ignited further violence by such hate groups as the Ku Klux Klan. See also Child Killers – Men, Frank, Leo; Child Victims, Phagan, Mary.

The Mad Axeman of New Orleans

On May 23, 1918, Italian grocer Jake Maggio of New Orleans awoke to gurgling sounds coming from the next room where his brother Joe and his wife were sleeping. Maggio was horrified to find that the two had been viciously attacked with an axe that was found near the bodies, and their throats cut with a razor. Mrs. Maggio’s head had nearly been severed from the horrific attack. Both Maggios died.

Seven years earlier, three similar axe killings of Italian grocers and their spouses occurred, including the Rosettis, the Curtises, and the Schiambras. At the time, these were believed to be the work of the Black Hand organized crime syndicate in New Orleans. Now it appeared as though an independent serial murderer was on the loose, targeting Italians. The killer became known as the Mad Axeman.

As the attacks continued, hysteria hit New Orleans. Finger-pointing led to various people being arrested for the attacks that were said to have been committed by a large, menacing white man brandishing an axe. Included among the suspects were Italian grocer Frank Jordano and his father Iorlando. In March 1919, the two were accused of killing the baby of and attempting to kill grocer Charles Cortimiglia and his wife, Rosie, who made the accusation. The Jordanos were tried in May 1919 and convicted. Frank was given a death sentence and Iorlando life behind bars.

Only the attacks continued after their imprisonment. On December 7, 1920, Rosie Cortimiglia admitted to authorities that she lied about the Jorandos attacking them as part of a vendetta, and they were released.

As for the real Mad Axeman of New Orleans, one possibility is career criminal and New Orleans resident Joseph Mumfire. He was shot and killed in Los Angeles on December 2, 1920. His killer was identified as Mrs. Mike Pepitone, whose husband was the Mad Axeman’s last known victim on October 27, 1919. Pepitone claimed she had seen Mumfire running from the scene of the crime. She went to trial in April 1921 and pleaded guilty. Mrs. Pepitone received a sentence of ten years. Whether or not Joseph Mumfire was the Mad Axeman will never be known for sure.

Black Widow Murderess Lydia Trueblood

On September 7, 1919, Edward Meyer of Idaho died of mysterious circumstances while hospitalized. The woman he had recently married, Lydia Trueblood, came under suspicion after a postmortem of Meyer indicated that he had died of arsenic poisoning. She had attempted to take out an insurance policy on her new husband, but the insurance company had rejected it.

It turned out that Lydia Trueblood was on her fourth husband—all who had died, along with a brother-in-law and one of her children, for insurance policy payoffs. Trueblood was a classic example of a Black Widow, marrying and murdering for money. Similar to another American Black Widow, Amy Archer-Gilligan—who murdered five husbands between 1901 and 1914 to profit from their life insurance—Missouri born Lydia Trueblood was cold, calculating, and vicious. From 1915 to 1919, she set up her victims and then murdered them by poisonous means.

Yet Trueblood managed to evade the law until the murder of her unsuspecting husband, Edward Meyer. Before the police could close in on her, she fled Idaho for California. In 1920, feeling safe from prosecution, Trueblood wed her fifth husband, a seaman. However, before she could take out an insurance policy on his life, the authorities managed to track her down. She was arrested and returned to Idaho to face charges in the murder of Meyer.

In 1921, Lydia Trueblood went to trial and was convicted of Edward Meyer’s death. She was sentenced to life in prison where she eventually died of natural causes. See also Black Widow Killers – Women, Trueblood, Lydia.

The 1920s

The roaring 1920s saw a number of notable murder crimes over the decade, including the murder of well-known director William Desmond Taylor, the killings of Reverend Edward Hall and choir singer Eleanor Mills, the Southern Pacific train robbery-murder, the deaths of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks and twelve-year-old Marion Parker, and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

The Murder of William Desmond Taylor

On the evening of February 1, 1922, silent film director William Desmond Taylor was shot and killed in his apartment in Los Angeles, California. The forty-five-year-old Taylor, who was considered a ladies’ man, was the victim of two .38-caliber bullets in his chest. His servant, Henry Peavey, discovered his body. Before the authorities arrived, various associates of the dead director came to the apartment upon hearing of his death, compromising evidence of the crime. Visitors included a couple of young actresses, Mabel Normand and Edna Purviance, along with executives from Paramount Studio—all seeking to remove incriminating materials from the premises, such as love letters or bootleg whiskey.

The police investigation and allegations gained national press coverage in the tabloids. Taylor was discovered to have changed his name from William Deane Tanner and had abandoned a wife and daughter years earlier. The director of such films as The Top of New York and Diamond From the Sky became the president of the Screen Directors Guild and was rumored to have had numerous relationships with female stars.

Among the suspects in Taylor’s death was his secretary, Edward Sands, who had vanished in 1921 after stealing from Taylor and forging checks in his name. Another suspect was Charlotte Shelby, whose seventeen-year-old daughter, actress Mary Miles Minter, was having an affair with Taylor. Shelby, who had a .38 revolver and was jealous of her daughter, was rumored to have been involved with the director herself. Authorities also considered that Taylor might have been the victim of a hired killer due to his lifestyle. William Desmond Taylor’s killer was never caught.

The Murders of Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall and Choir Singer Eleanor Mills

On September 16, 1922, a shocking discovery on a New Brunswick, New Jersey, lover’s lane led to the bodies of Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall and choir singer Eleanor Mills. The forty-one-year-old married pastor and the thirty-four-year-old attractive singer, who was married to the sexton of the church, were brutally murdered. Hall was shot once in the head and Mills was shot three times in the forehead and her throat was slashed and tongue severed. Steamy love letters were scattered about the bodies.

There were no arrests made in the double murder and the case seemed to be going nowhere for four years until the New York Daily Mirror began publishing stories about the Hall-Mills homicides. The newspaper suggested that Frances Hall, the Reverend’s wife, and her brothers and cousin were behind the horrific murders of Hall and Mills. A secret witness to that effect led to the indictment of Mrs. Hall, her brothers Henry and Willie Stevens, and her cousin Henry Carpender. Carpender would face a separate trial.

The trial of Frances Hall and her brothers in 1926 drew international coverage. Eleanor Mills’ daughter, Charlotte, testified that the love letters belonged to her mother. The prosecution was able to establish that the pastor and singer were engaged in a passionate affair. The prosecutor’s star witness was a woman named Jane Gibson, dubbed the Pig Woman, because of her pig farm near the death scene. She identified the defendants as being there and that she had heard arguing and shots fired.

The defense countered by attacking Gibson’s credibility and memory. The jury took only a few hours to find the defendants not guilty. The case against the cousin, Henry Carpender, was dismissed. Frances Hall and her brothers sued the Daily Mirror for libel and the case was settled out of court. In spite of the continuing suspicions of guilt against the accused, the murders of Hall and Mills were never solved.

The Train Robbery-Murder on the Southern Pacific

On October 12, 1923, an Old West type train robbery turned into cold-blooded murder and a sensation of the day. Along the border of California and Oregon, the Southern Pacific train Gold Special was en route to San Francisco when three robbers equipped with a shotgun, Colt .45, and box of dynamite approached it. When Edwin Daugherty, the mail clerk, refused to open the bolted car door, one of the robbers tossed the dynamite on the sill and the mail car almost immediately became a blazing inferno. Along with killing Daugherty by the blast, the robbers used their guns to eliminate other witnesses including the engineer, Sidney Bates, the brakeman, and fire fighter before fleeing into the hills.

The railroad authorities employed the services of American criminologist Edward Oscar Heinrich to help solve the case. Heinrich, who lived in Berkeley, California, had often been compared to the fictional British detective Sherlock Holmes, much to his chagrin. Though some of his methods and conclusions were questionable, Heinrich found a registered mail receipt in a pair of overalls left behind by the bandits. It was traced to an Oregon logger by the name of Roy D’Autremont. He and his brothers, Ray and Hugh D’Autremont, became the chief suspects in the botched robbery-murder.

It took four years—along with reward money paid in gold and Wanted posters placed in train stations nationwide—before the elusive trio was captured. The D’Autremont brothers were tried and convicted for their murderous crimes in Medford, Oregon, in 1927. Roy D’Autremont was found to be insane after spending twenty years in prison. Hugh D’Autremont, stricken with stomach cancer, was paroled in 1958. Ray D’Autremont was paroled in 1961.

The Kidnap and Murder of Bobby Franks

On May 21, 1924, fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks was kidnapped and brutally murdered in Chicago, Illinois, in one of the most shocking crimes of the 1920s and, indeed, the 20th century. Franks, son of multimillionaire Jacob Franks, was on his way home from school when his killers lured him to a car. They abducted him and bludgeoned him to death.

The murderers, Richard A. Loeb and Nathan F. Leopold Jr., were surprisingly also from two of Chicago’s wealthiest families. Eighteen-year-old Loeb and nineteen-year-old Leopold were both attending graduate school at the University of Chicago. Spoiled by wealth, intelligence, jealousy, and perhaps boredom, they concocted a plan to commit the perfect crime of murder. The two rented a car that fateful